Extract — The Last Secret Agent: The untold story of my life as a spy behind Nazi enemy lines
Author:
Pippa Latour with Jude Dobson
Publisher:
Allen & Unwin
ISBN:
9781991006561
Date published:
23 April 2024
Pages:
288
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$37.99
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This is the astounding true story of one of the last female special operations agents in France to get out alive after its liberation in WWII.
Born in 1921, Pippa Latour became a covert special operations agent who parachuted into a field in Nazi-occupied Normandy. Trained by the British, Pippa was lauded for her fluency with languages and her coding ability - attributes she put to remarkable use when she posed as a teenage soap-seller, often selling her wares to the German soldiers and sending back information via code to England.
During her time in Normandy, Pippa sent 135 secret messages conveying crucial information on German troop positions in the lead-up to D-Day. Pippa continued her mission until the liberation of Paris in August 1944.
For decades, Pippa told no one - not even her family - of her incredible feats during WWII.
Now, for the first time, her story can be told in full.
Extracted from The Last Secret Agent: The untold story of my life as a spy behind Nazi enemy lines by Pippa Latour with Jude Dobson. Published by Allen & Unwin NZ. RRP$37.99. Out 23 April.
As I sat beside the hole in the aircraft, ready to go with all of the pre-drop checks done, those annoying questioning thoughts re-entered my head. ‘Why am I doing this?’ I found myself thinking. Although I knew I could change my mind right up until I jumped, it was really too late now and I reminded myself— again — that I had been trained to do the job. I put out of my mind the thought of the men in this area who were ‘no longer at their posts’. I needed to control my thoughts, focus on the here and now and back my own ability.
In minutes I would be saying goodbye as Lampooner (Miss Lampooner to my new American friends), and landing on French soil as Plus Fours. The change of name was intended to expose double agents back in England. The Gestapo had been waiting at SOE drop zones and shooting the agents as they floated down by parachute; obviously there was a leak somewhere at the English end. Agents now went over with one name and changed it as soon as they got there. Any double agent would only ever know the English name; the French would only ever know the French one.
I also had a different field name — unknown to me — with which they would identify me back at home base in England. This name was used solely by Baker Street; none of the people in France would know it either. After the war, I found out that my field name was Genevieve. In the fifth century there had been a young girl named Genevieve who was said to have saved Paris by diverting Attila’s Huns away from the city. She later became Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. Perhaps the person who named me Genevieve unconsciously had high hopes for me.
The weather was now deteriorating, with ground fog swirling around, but we needed to look for an area reasonably close to the dropped containers for my own drop so that the reception committee had a decent chance of finding me. We did another couple of runs to look for a field with livestock in — many fields had been mined by the Germans, so those being grazed by animals were the only safe ones. The third pass identified a field with a few white blobs in it.
‘Miss Lampooner, we think they’re goats,’ came the call from the dispatcher. ‘We can drop you in that field on the next pass.’
Although it was a statement rather than a question, I answered anyway, in case he was wondering if I was still happy to jump. ‘I grew up with goats. Okay — I’ll go.’
Moving to the jump position, I looked up at the light above me, waiting for it to change as the signal to exit the aircraft — rather than staring down at the open hole below me. The dispatcher motioned to me to look at him instead — which I did just as he shouted ‘Go!’ I pushed myself forward, through the hole, into the night sky, immediately feeling a rush of bracing cold air on my face. I felt the reassuring pull of the static line from the aircraft, opening my parachute almost immediately. We were flying at a low level, about 500 or 600 feet, and I knew I would be on the ground within 30 seconds or so, which would reduce the chances of me being spotted in the moonlight. The fall was very brief, and before I knew it I could see the ground coming up below me.
***
I was happy with the way I landed — in an open space — but the wind was troublesome and blew my parachute towards a nearby tree, dragging me along with it. What bad luck, I thought, as there seemed to be no other trees around. I managed to keep my feet on the ground but unfortunately the parachute ended up stuck in the upper branches of an apple tree.
I was trying to dislodge it when something more pressing got my attention. Hearing a scuffle behind me, I turned to face the noise. A cow had come out of the slightly foggy darkness and was staring straight at me. I was dead scared of anything with horns, and had visions of it ramming me while I was immobilised.
I grabbed my Sten machine gun and pointed it at the cow, saying, ‘Go, go!’ It’s a large gun and it had the desired effect: the cow recoiled immediately. But then it lowered its head as if to charge at me. Or it could have been submission — I couldn’t tell. I love animals, and my reaction to this was not one of panic but of concern for the welfare of the cow — ‘Oh,’ I thought immediately, ‘the poor beast must have been beaten by a stick by someone.’
Slowly, carefully, I put the gun away so as not to look threatening, and then bent down and picked a large bunch of grass. I’m really not quite sure what was going through my mind, but it was innate in me to side with the animal and look friendly. By now the cow was just calmly studying me; a definite improvement.
As my attempts to pull the parachute out of the apple tree were to no avail, I needed to get my stiletto knife out of my breast pocket so that I could cut the cords. It did cross my mind that it could also be useful if the cow changed her mind and did charge at me. While the male agents were issued with larger knives, the stiletto knife for female agents looked more like a paper knife. But we had been trained how to use it if we needed to — although petite, in the right hands it could be very unkind to the recipient.
As I pulled the knife out, I saw the small L pill package that I had tucked into the pocket at the last minute pop out and disappear into the darkness somewhere by my feet. As I bent down to attempt to look for it, the cow startled suddenly — not at me, but at a noise behind me. I spun around to see a young man walking up to me. He looked about seventeen, and his clothing showed that he might have come from a nearby farm. Part of the reception committee, then. After silently pointing up at my parachute, he gave it a good tug which brought it tumbling to the ground. Next, he came over to get my overalls and headgear, presumably to bundle it all up together to dispose of. Up until now neither of us had said a word, but my removing of the overalls brought a surprised gasp from him.
‘Une fille! Tu es une fille!’ (‘A girl! You are a girl!’)
About the authors
Following the war, Pippa settled in New Zealand where she raised four children. For decades, Pippa told no one - not even her family - of her incredible feats during WWII.
For seventy years, Pippa's contributions to the war effort were largely unheralded, but she was finally given her due in 2014 when she was awarded France's highest military decoration, the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Lgion d'Honneur (Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour).
Pippa was the last surviving F (French) Section Special Operations (SOE) agent from World War II.
Pippa finally decided to tell her remarkable story, written with the assistance of TV personality and award-winning historical documentary producer and writer Jude Dobson.
Jude has been researching/writing, producing and directing WWI and WWII content for the past six years. She won the New York Radio Awards Bronze Award in 2023 in the historical documentary category, for an Anzac Day audio documentary about WWII aviators telling their stories.
Pippa chose Jude to tell her story and they formed a close bond before Pippa's death in 2023, at the age of 102.
